This Desert Life: You can do a lot with snot

Saturday

There’s less graffiti on the rocks bordering Horsemen’s Center in Apple Valley of late thanks to a little elbow grease and a lot of snot.

The grease came courtesy of Jonah Olson and 15 or so of his friends. The snot — Elephant Snot, to be exact — was provided by the fine folks of the Mojave Desert Land Trust (MDLT) in Joshua Tree.

Formed in 2006, MDLT is primarily in the business of buying up land and donating it to the National Park Service. Just last year, the Mojave National Preserve grew by 3,000 acres thanks to the group.

Like any sensible nonprofit, though, MDLT is also concerned with obtaining dollars to sustain the ol’ operation. And so they got their hands on a stockpile of Elephant Snot — a biodegradable gel that eats away at paint — thanks to a grant from San Bernardino County.

“It was a grant to purchase the chemical on the condition that we would share it with the community. We’re in the process of getting that grant renewed to help spread that resource around.”

That’s Adam Henne, MDLT’s volunteer and outreach coordinator. He said the group partnered with Jonah, an Apple Valley resident I’ve seen hanging around Town Council meetings, after the 35-year-old teacher reached out to them in search of a solution to the graffiti problem at local rock climbing spots.

MDLT had recently started to “poke their head” around the High Desert, according to Jonah. A graffiti removal project, then, would be another way to spread stewardship west of the Morongo Basin.

“I’m glad they’re reaching out,” Jonah said. “People forget about this part of the desert because it's suburbanized and even urbanized, I would say. There’s not really a connection for kids today that there’s a wilderness around them and that it’s important.”

Graffiti — specifically tagging in the outcropped areas — is a growing problem at Horsemen's Center, according to Jonah, who described the area as kind of a secret training ground for climbers since routes were established in the 1980s.

“A lot of the climbers in the area cut their teeth there. It was their kindergarten,” Jonah said. “Most of the routes in the Horsemen’s Center are not in the town part itself. They're in the (Bureau of Land Management) part behind it.”

Outside of the obvious blight and environmental issues, graffiti is a particular concern to climbers, and traditional removal efforts don’t help, Jonah explained.

“Mitigation, in the past, has been to paint over it,” he said. “Which is fine visually if it’s done right, but there are two problems: It’s a quick fix and it doesn’t show that there's much care going into it. And it still ruins the climbing route because the paint makes the rock slippery. It doesn't really solve the technical problem.”

So, with the help of MDLT and fellow nature enthusiasts from groups like the Desert Climbers Coalition and the High Desert Young Democrats, Jonah organized his own mitigation party.

He and his friends spent three hours applying the Elephant Snot last Friday, letting the gel set in overnight. The next morning, they got down to the more difficult task of actually removing the paint, with the help of Adam and MDLT colleague Patrick Wiener.

Jonah was rather nonchalant about the work involved, but the whole process took another three hours of water-jug hauling, spraying, scraping and scrubbing away the carelessness of others.

“It’s not just gangbangers who are doing this either. It’s locals,” Jonah said. “There was a fresh tag of somebody asking somebody to prom. You can tell it’s just local kids who think it’s OK. They see the graffiti and think, ‘This is what these rocks are for.’”

Jonah has documented about 150 tags in the rocks near Horsemen’s Center, but he admitted the number is probably higher. In total, the group was successful in reducing the number by 10 or 12. Adam referred to it as “a dent,” but, you know, a good dent.

Anyhow, Jonah has embraced the immensity of the problem with enthusiasm. He’s gathering support and more volunteers through social media, and he plans to eventually hit other blighted areas of the High Desert.

I offered up the disaster zone that is Mojave Narrows near Old Town Victorville.

“Right now it’s kind of just certain climbing areas because those are the people fueling this,” he said. “This was a good trial. It was really, really hot, though. I think we’ll spend the summer getting organized. Then in the fall we can really go back and eradicate a lot of this graffiti. That’s our goal.”

Matthew Cabe can be reached at MCabe@VVDailyPress.com or at 760-951-6254. Follow him on Twitter @DP_MatthewCabe.

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